New Alliances that Unleash Huge Profits with Social Benefits

For centuries we have had two separate production and distribution systems, one business and the other social, serving virtually every human need but not talking to one another.  Over the last three decades, however, the citizen sector has become as competitive and entrepreneurial as business and has largely closed the earlier productivity, scale, and globalization gaps.  As a result, these two different systems can now -- very, very profitably for all the actors -- be collapsed into one, far superior Hybrid Value Chain (HVC), an operating framework that leverages the strengths of citizen and business sector players to redefine value in game-changing ways.  A concept recently published by the Harvard Business Review. Read here for a brief summary of this article.

On March 10, 2011, Valeria Budinich, Vice President at Ashoka and Chief Entrepreneur for the, Full Economic Citizenship initiative, shared her insights with Harvard Business School students about Ashoka’s experiences implementing HVC across sectors and around the globe. Just back from India after reviewing Ashoka’s HVC pilots in the affordable housing sector,  she shared lessons that she learned on the ground for forging lasting alliances between corporate and citizen partners, what obstacles were overcome, and Ashoka’s brokering role to guide them through the initial stages and getting them ready for scale more broadly. The event was moderated by Professor Michael Chu.

Do you have experience creating a hybrid value chain? Do you know about an organization or social entrepreneur that does? Please let us know by emailing us at [email protected]. To learn more about Hybrid Value Chain visit our website at www.fec.ashoka.org.